lens culture
Exhumation at Comalapa
VB

Exhumation at Comalapa

Photos
18
Status
Public
Created
May 27, 2013
Updated
Feb 09, 2022
Categories
Documentary Black & White

Photos (18)

Cover
A skull lays in a recently opened grave. At the end of January, 135 bodies had been recovered from the exhumation at Comalapa. The number is expected in the end to be well over 200. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Townspeople arrive at the gravesite that sits along the edge of a cornfield. Everyday, people come to watch the exhumation, and to look for signs of their lost relatives. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Onlookers surround the edge of a recently opened grave to watch the anthropologists work. The participation and collaboration of local people is vital to the exhumation. © Victor Blue, 2004
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A woman grasps the arm of another as they peer into a grave. Crowds of townspeople arrive daily to watch the progress of the work, and to look for signs of their missing loved ones in the bodies uncovered. Most hope for the release and end to the doubt that identifying their missing relatives will bring. © Victor Blue, 2004
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White tape outlines the form of one body in a grave. Detailed drawings are made and the sites exhaustively photographed, as the remains are viewed as evidence in hopes that the information can one day be used in trials against the authorities responsible for the killings. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Men from the town of Comalapa dig furiously as they help open a new grave at the ex-military base. The townsfolk value immensely the work of the anthropologists, who also realize the importance of their work to the healing of the communities affected by the violence of the war. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Anthropologist Danny Guzman shows a human jawbone to family members gathered at the graveside to aid in identification of a body. The work of the FAFG is physically and emotionally challenging, as well as dangerous -- they regularly receive death threats and harassment for the politically sensitive work of digging up Guatemala’s past. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Widows and children of the disappeared hold photos of the men they search for at a demonstration at Comalapa on the Day of the Dead. The crowds that attend the exhumation daily are overwhelmingly female, searching for their male relatives that disappeared during the war. © Victor Blue, 2004
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A woman points into a grave from behind a rope as a young boy and his dog look on. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Two skulls lay twisted as they fell into a grave. The REMI report prepared by Archbishop Gerardi in 1998, (for which he was subsequently murdered) found that over 90 percent of the human rights violations committed during the war were at the hands of the Guatemalan Army, and almost all against defenseless civilians. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Danny Guzman hands a bag containing ribs of an exhumed body out of a grave. The grave site is treated as a crime scene, and all bones, clothing, everything is meticulously catalogued and recorded as it is removed. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Family members of "disappeared" people grieve at a vigil on the Day of the Dead at the site of the exhumation in Comalapa. © Victor Blue, 2004
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A woman holds a candle at a march to remember the disappeared on the Day of the Dead. © Victor Blue, 2004
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An anthropologist pulls a skull from the earth. © Victor Blue, 2004
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A tree marked with ribbons and posters overlooks the site of the Comalapa exhumation. One foreign journalist commented on how hard it is to believe that such horrible things could happen in such beautiful country. © Victor Blue, 2004
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Maria and her grandmother prepare an altar on a recently exhumed grave. The vast majority of the relatives looking for their family members, indeed the vast majority of the victims of the war, are indigenous Mayan. Each day they construct an altar to the dead above the earth they were pulled from. © Victor Blue, 2004
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A stake marks a skeleton as the 5th body in one recently opened grave. The head was cut off and lays at the feet of its own body. © Victor Blue, 2004
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A young girl stares back from the edge of a grave. The legacy of the violence of the war years will continue to haunt her country for generations to come. The exhumations of the disappeared is only a first step in repairing the fractured society she has inherited. © Victor Blue, 2004
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